


Women on Fire

by LilyEllison



Category: Daredevil (TV), The Defenders (Marvel TV)
Genre: 5 Things, Drabbles, F/M, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-23
Updated: 2019-04-23
Packaged: 2020-01-24 06:46:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18566098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LilyEllison/pseuds/LilyEllison
Summary: Five women in Matt Murdock's life and all the ways they burn.





	Women on Fire

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first thing I ever tried writing in the Daredevil fandom. Now that I've been around for a hot minute, I'm realizing that the world on fire thing maybe isn't the best metaphor, so this all feels too visual to me now. But there was a sentence or two in here that I liked, so I'm posting anyway. :D
> 
> If I got the count right, these should all be 100 words each.

**I. Claire**

She sparkles across his mind like birthday candles, flickering warm. Her touch on his battered body is golden, glowing. He kisses her once and feels the way her strength goes down to the bone. She is not made of wax. She won't melt under the heat of her own flame, the way he always fears he will.

She still makes him think of candles, though. The trick ones. The ones that leave you gasping as they pop back into flame over and over. She refuses to be snuffed out, and he is nothing if not a whirlwind.

She cannot stay.

**II. Karen**

From the very first, she dazzles him with a flare of white. She is more flashlight than flame, always peering into dark corners, exposing secrets. He cares for her. He is afraid of her. Every time he manages to open a door for her, somewhere he closes a window. 

He expects that she will give up on him. His greatest talent is driving people away. But she keeps a home for him to come back to; she doesn't let go, even when she wants to. He will give her back the rent money, but the rest he can never repay.

**III. Elektra**

Elektra bursts in shades of scarlet. Or crimson. Words that sound and taste like blood. When their mouths meet, it is wildfire, consuming, flashing through every careful barrier he's ever built. 

Every time he loses her, she takes more of him, until all that's left is...

Now, he mostly remembers her voice, the low sinuous song of her in his ears. He used to make her read to him, anything that would keep her talking. Neruda sonnets, Dickens. "Just not the Bible, Matthew," she laughed.

He wishes he could recall a time when they weren't drawing lines for each other.

**IV. Jessica**

She is a crackle of orange, a whiff of smoke. She is smoldering embers, burning low, that explode into a shower of sparks when poked.

He tracks her from a rooftop on a night he wants to die. He thinks somehow she'd understand. But he doesn't want a reason to stick around. Better to let her think he died a devil than show her he cannot live as a man.

Later, after Fisk, she corners him in an alley. She calls him a miserable fucking coward and hugs him tight.

And he knows he was right. She would have understood.

**V. Sister Maggie**

In a world on fire, she burns blue. A searing gas flame. The flickering bank of cobalt-glass candles his grandmother knelt in front of every week, head bowed at the feet of a stone Virgin.

He imagines her as that statue, watching him with faraway, unblinking eyes, a layer of rock around her heart. 

His holy mother is no saint. _And cursed is the fruit of thy womb, Matthew._

She doesn't quite beg forgiveness, and he doesn't quite grant it, but somehow, together, they are full of grace.

_Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death._


End file.
